


The Love Song of V. Trevor

by in_a_different_box_to_you



Series: A Very Persistent Illusion [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, M/M, Pre-The Reichenbach Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3200099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_a_different_box_to_you/pseuds/in_a_different_box_to_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor Trevor has returned, again, which is surprising for everyone, especially John Watson, as he did not know of his existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of one shot, set after 'The Ramblings of a Teenage Intellectual,' even though I have barely started that fic yet. I hope this is better... I can't write John.. or Sherlock... and I didn't even bother trying to write Victor properly this time. Sorry and be nice to me: I have prelims.  
> Inspiration, poetry and title - 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' - T. S. Eliot
> 
> P.S. I apologise for the overuse of ellipses and the single dash.

**Let us go then, you and I,**  
**When the evening is spread out against the sky,**  
**Like a patient etherised upon a table.**  
**VLT**

Sherlock tossed his phone onto John’s armchair as footsteps clattered up the stairs. John stumbled through the door and into the kitchen, dropping the bulging shopping bags on the countertop. Sherlock closed his eyes and attempted to block out the rustling from behind him.

“Sherlock.”

 

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock groaned and twisted around on the sofa, placing his serial killer smile atop his face. “John.”

“Why are-”

“Shut up.” He slumped back around.

“Why are there two hundred and forty six packets of miniature fans in the freezer?”

“Experiment.”

“For what purpose? What I mean is - Why fans?”

“Cheapest polyethylene product in ‘Pound Land.’”

“Sherlock, it’s ‘ _Pound Land_ ’, everything is a pound.”

“Details… details…” Sherlock sat up and glanced around him. “Pass me my phone.”

“Case?”

“Hmmmmmm…..” He looked up. “No, just a… thing.”

“A thing?”

“Mmm. John, do you have a sex meeting tomorrow?”

“A date, Sherlock, it’s called a date. Why?”

“Do you?”

“Do you want me to?”

“John, while this conversation is unbelievably enthralling, it would go a lot faster were you to answer the question.”

“I might have a date tomorrow, yes.”

“Excellent.”

John had just reached Sarah’s house when he received a text from her saying that she was very sorry but she wasn’t going to be done at the clinic until late. He clambered back into the cab, apologised to the driver, and returned to baker’s street.

When he reached the top of the stairs he heard the murmur of voices from behind the door. “Sherlock?” There was a stranger sitting on the sofa. And Sherlock was lying with his head in its lap. They both looked up as John opened the door.

“John.”

“Client?” John asked doubtfully.

“Not exactly.”

“Scandinavian secret agent?”

“No.”

“Retired clown?”

“Not this time.”

The man stood up and offered his hand. “Hello, you must be John.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “ _Obviously_.”

They ignored him. John stared at the stranger, then slowly shook his hand, which was very cold. “I’m sorry, am I meant to know who you are?”

“Victor, John. This is Victor Trevor.” Sherlock answered, as if that was obvious and John should have used his clairvoyant abilities to deduce it.

“Yes? Sorry?”

Victor Trevor folded his arms and wondered over to the window, looking mildly dejected. “Christ, Sherlock, I was just beginning to convince myself that you cared.”

Sherlock stood up, placing a hand on Victor’s arm. “You never came up.”

“Really? Was he never the slightest bit curious about…” He turned towards Sherlock and gestured around the room. “I mean, he lives with you!”

John blinked. “I’m sorry, I think I might be missing something.”

“Don’t be sorry, John.” Victor smiled pleasantly at him before turning to glower at Sherlock. “Sherlock is a prat.”

“Hand on, are you? I mean-”

“Oh, shut up.” Sherlock spat and threw himself back onto the sofa.

Victor smirked at him. “Yes, you could say that.”

“Oh.” John looked out the window at the house opposite. “Wait! Say what? I didn’t say anything.”

Sherlock sighed, exchanged a look with Victor that screamed ‘my, how slow these mortals be.’“John, Victor is my… my boyfriend, horribly mundane term, but I suppose it applies.”

Victor snorted. “My God, Sherlock, I’m flattered.” John looked between the two of them and contemplated this revelation.

“So, John, how was the sex meeting- I’m sorry, date?” Sherlock drawled.

Joh did not reply. Instead he took in Sherlock’s boyfriend, with his curly light brown hair and sleeveless jumper over a yellow patterned shirt. “Wait a second, you didn’t want me to meet him, did you?”

“With deductive abilities like that you could put me out of a job.”

“Why?”

Sherlock ignored him. So Victor answered. “He’s a coward.”

“What?”

“He is afraid of what you might think.” Victor almost sang.

“Think about what? Why would I…?”

“Because you go on ‘sex meetings.’”

“I don’t understand.”

He picked up Sherlock’s violin bow and pointed it at Sherlock’s head. “Sherlock is in love.”

“Shut up.” Sherlock snapped.

“So?”

“‘Love is a chemical defect found on the losing side’” Victor quoted gleefully.

“What’s that got to do with me dating?”

“Because for him love is something abstract that transcends reality and he _hates it_.” He beamed.

“I do not.” Sherlock countered sulkily.

“You like to define everything with your _mind palace_ and your _sock index_.”

“I’m fine with it.”

“Liar.”

Jon shook his head. “Sorry, what?”

“Sherlock is asexual, so am I actually.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?” Sherlock sneered.

“You people all see love and lust as mutually inclusive.” Victor waved a hand submissively and opened his mouth to expand.

“Well not exactly mutually, John’s perfectly happy having sex with someone he just met.” Sherlock glared at John.

“Shut up, Sherlock.” He turned back to victor. “What makes you think that?”

“Past experience, I’m afraid.”

John’s brain caught up with the conversation, slightly out of breath. “Hand on, since when have I been one of ‘you people’?” He turned to Sherlock accusingly, “Are you replacing me?!” 

Victor made a disgusted face. “God, no, I’m not living with him.”

John looked up. “What?”

“He tortures that beautiful instrument-” Victor gestured to the violin, “-with the grief stricken wailing of Bach during hours that no one should be awake to witness.”

Sherlock shook his head in scorn. “He listens to ‘Spring’ on infinite repeat and dances around to it-“ Sherlock mimed this, waving his arms around like a child high on lemonade. “-as if its that awful modern thing like the sub atomic particle…”

“Electro?”

“Yes, that-”

“Hey, I taught you how to dance. You loved it.”

“-And he refuses to drink milk.”

“I fail to see how that is an issue.”

“Yeah, we constantly run out of milk.” John agreed.

“He complains when I dissect things.”

“He dissects innocent creatures, it’s evil.”

John raised his eyebrows. “You say you’re in love?”

“Profoundly.”

“Severely.”

Victor snorted. “Thanks.”

 

 

“John.” John turned to see Victor leaning in the kitchen doorway, his brow creased in concern.

“Victor?”

“How is he?”

“Who, Sherlock?

Victor went quiet and looked down at where he picked at the paintwork with a fingernail. “Is he still… using?”

“No.”

“Thank God.” He slumped slightly.

John lent against the counter. “So, how did you two meet?”

“Officially?” Victor grinned. “My massive black Alsatian cross savaged his leg at Oxford.”

“Unofficially?”

He looked away again. “We sat next to each other in registration in senior school.”

“Why doesn’t that count?”

He hesitated then replied quietly, “He deleted it. He doesn’t remember.”

“What?”

“He erased me.” A flake of white gloss fluttered onto the linoleum. “After Redbeard and the drugs,” He rubbed the side of his eye and sighed. “I think he just didn’t want to feel anything again.”

“Redbeard?”

Victor let his head fall onto the wood. “Not my story to tell.”

“How did I not know any of this?”

 “There is so much about a person that we will never know.”

“Especially Sherlock Holmes.”

“Yes.”

Victor’s phone screeched with violins and he removed it from his pocket.

**Til human voices wake us, and we drown.**  
**SH**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really a one-shot anymore. Sorry about my inability to write anything in chronological order.

“You know,” John said, lowering himself into his chair. “This explains a lot.”

 

“Mmm.” Sherlock said, noncommittally. 

 

“You should go on holiday.” Sherlock looked up. “You and Victor. Spend some time together.”

 

“How terribly pedestrian.”

 

“Look, this -” John raised his eyebrows in the ‘You need to listen to me’ face. “Is just…” He sighed, “What the hell do I know.” and buried himself in _The Guardian_.

 

“Sherlock.” Victor called as erupted through the door. He placed a dripping Sainsbury’s bag onto the kitchen table, his hair wet from the rain. “Dancing?”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, sliding from his seat and throwing on his coat. He turned to a surprised John, “We don’t need a holiday. We have _dancing,_ ” he drawled before Victor dragged him from the flat. 

 

"Weird that that's not a euphemism," John murmured as he scanned the latest Tory mess up.  

 

*

 

Victor gripped Sherlock’s hand as though he was afraid that the other man would melt in the rain. 

 

“Victor.” Sherlock said, pulling Victor to a stop and pealing his hand away, flexing the feeling back into his fingers. “We have to stop.”

 

“What?”

 

“This. T.S.Eliot and the whole,” He gestured around but trailed off. Victor looked at Sherlock as though he really had melted, dropping his hands to his sides and backing away. “No!” Sherlock gasped. “No, VLT, I’m not - What I mean is, you should move into 221C.”

 

Victor’s shoulders slumped from their defensive taught-ness. “Sherlock. I love you but I’m not living in London.”

 

Sherlock pouted. “Why not?”

 

“Because its claustrophobic and agoraphobic and I hate the tube.”

 

“There are cabs.” 

 

“I’m an artist, I can’t afford to just jump in a taxi whenever I want to go anywhere.”

 

“I can - “

 

“No, Sherlock. I am not letting you _keep_ me.”

 

“You are being ridiculous.”

 

Victor ignored him, worrying his bottom lip and considering the ring on his middle finger, “I like T.S.Eliot.”

 

“A genius.” Sherlock agreed, although Victor new it was mostly for him. 

 

He looked up into Sherlock’s face, watching the water trace pathways through the interlocking creases of his rare smile. “I love you.”

 

“Victor I - “ He swept the fringe from his eyes, sending droplets scattered over Victor’s hair. “I need to tell you something.” He caught Victor’s eye and smirked. “Your glasses have steamed up.”

 

“ _Wow_. Didn’t notice that.” He wiped them on the hem of his cardigan and then put them back on.

 

Sherlock placed his hands on Victor’s waist. “Victor.”

 

“Yeah?” He automatically reached up to grip Sherlock’s shoulders. 

 

“I remember.”

 

“What?”

 

“I remember why you never let me kiss you. I remember why when we first met - when we met again - why it felt like deja vu when I saw Bean in front of that cab and why you stared at me like I, well like you were looking at a ghost, that day at Mycroft’s.”

 

“When?”

 

“You don’t remember.”

 

“No, I mean. How long?”

 

“Dartmoor. You’ve read John’s blog? The rest of the fucking world has.”

 

Victor laughed. “Yes.”

 

“There was a moment: ‘Sherlock Holmes felt fear.’ I panicked and I tore up my mind palace, looking for an answer. There was a door. Redbeard wasn’t there, but the police station was. It didn’t add up, so I opened some more. It’s not so hard, once you’ve started. It was like meeting you backwards. All those thing’s I’d deleted. And Victor?”

 

“Yeah?” Victor croaked, eyes blurred with water and dripping tangled hair and droplets caught between his eyelashes and the lenses of his glasses.

“I’m sorry.” Sherlock broke eye contact and looked up, watching blurred droplets emerge from infinity and plummet past his vision. Then he stared through Victor’s pupils, realising how hard it was to see directly into both the holes to his brain at once. The slight difference in eye positioning frustrated Sherlock. 

 

He sometimes wished that the transport would disappear and they could be what they really were - too beautifully evolved computers communicating. So that maybe, electrical signals could leap straight from Victor’s neurones to his. 

 

He swallowed. “And I love you.”

 

But maybe, Victor thought, it really did work that way, and his poetry and Sherlock’s logic would form the greatest genius to ever have existed. 

 

 

 

 


End file.
